^^
In case you've not seen it, let me share with all of you this piece by Nick Sand, which I find so incredibly comforting. I would wish that for you, too.
Journey into the realm of ibogaine
by Nick Sand
Back in 1964, when psychedelic exploration was still legal, I obtained three doses of ibogaine. I had previously been doing extensive exploration with LSD, peyote, DMT, and mescaline, both in my laboratory as chief alchemist for the League of Spiritual Discovery, and internally on my own quest for illumination. Always on the lookout for new and effective ways to access God-consciousness, I was eager to try ibogaine. I'd heard fascinating stories about ibogaine from older friends who had turned me on to my first psychedelic experience with mescaline. One told of a parade of cosmic proportions. Another described a pageant of incredible detail and completely realistic visions, like watching a movie. These were some of the tantalizing descriptions presented to me about ibogaine.
LSD tends to magnify, intensify and empower the vision of a timeless moment. DMT, on the other end of the tryptamine spectrum, tends to transport one into a totally “other” realm, replete with elaborate and intensely colorful designs, strange guardian creatures, and visitations from divine messengers. Having retrieved rich treasures of spiritual secrets from the DMT realms, I am intrigued by the descriptions of ibogaine.
Looking through my anthropology books, I found passages describing members of the Bwiti cult in central Africa using Tabernanthe iboga, a traditional plant source for ibogaine, in ceremonies to visit their ancestors and receive instructions. In lower doses, ibogaine is said to give hunters the ability to stay motionless for many hours while they became one with the jungle.
My two intrepid cosmic companions, Alan and Raymond, and myself are all enthusiastic about trying it. We decide to take it at their flat in Brooklyn Heights—a brownstone building that had fallen into disrepair—that lay on the boundary between the black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods. They had fixed the fireplace and transformed the flat into a psychedelic temple. Now assembled, we discuss the preparations. We fast for two days and spend the day before quietly reading, meditating, and doing yoga to ensure the best possible experience. We disconnect the phone and put a “do not disturb, meditation in progress” sign up on the door.
We each take about 800 mg of ibogaine hydrochloride, a chalky white powder with a bitter, earthy taste. We sit on mattresses arranged on a carpet around the fire. We wait one, two, three hours, and nothing happens. The fire burns low, but no one moves to build it up. The shadows grew long and night fell. Simultaneously, we all lay down, as the lethargy that had subtly been coming on grows more intense. I have no desire to move. Everything is silent and still. I feel that I am in a soft, humming, electric cocoon that gives me little “funny bone” shocks if I touch it.
I am in the middle, centered between euphoria and depression. I feel balanced. My sense perceptions are heightened. The little glow from the fire brightens the whole room. My eyes focus in a different way—clear, but taking everything in. And then the room starts to spin. It is similar to an alcohol drunkenness, but with no feeling of vertigo or nausea at all. I am glad that I fasted! The whirling increases and I feel like I am in the center of a pinwheel. Faster and faster it spins, and then I am rising like a projectile through the room—with great chunks of wall and brick peeling back and falling away in slow motion. I shoot up into the stars: a pair of disembodied eyes wandering, searching. I am an essence - a solo awareness flying through the universe, exploring, seeking.
After an immense journey, I come to a planet. It is a sandy yellow color. I am able to project my vision down to it, and I look around the surface of the planet. It is an inhospitable looking place; with winds strong enough to blow rocks and sand past me. It looks lethally hot and dry. I move on. Next, I come to a dark green planet. No clouds. No seas. No mountains. It looks as though it is covered with a poisonous mold. I do not want to go any closer. I continue on through the galaxies until I arrive above a whirling vortex that is coalescing into a solar system. I watched a sun and its planets form, and come closer to observe. I am drawn to one of the middle planets. The fiery liquid surface is cooling and turning from yellow and red to black solids, broken by red rivers of lava emitting flames. Slowly, the planet cools until fumes and vapors veil the entire surface. As I circle the planet, I sense a long epoch of torrential rains, as water vapor forms and condenses in the upper atmosphere and falls toward the burning surface, only to evaporate again long before reaching the ground. Eventually, the planet cools and the rains arrive on the lands below. After what seems like a long time, the clouds begin to clear. I scan the planet now, seeing and being everything that I come across. I watch mountain chains rise and volcanoes burst, and everything subside again and again into flat plains and meandering rivers. Time and time again, mountains rise and dissolve and continents appear and disappear. Then this slows down, and I watch the seas and plains. All is sterile—a tan land with smoking volcanoes and no life, yet fecund and ready.
As I watch, I see life appear. I observe spots of green forming along the seashores. They shoot along the banks, forming a green margin, and then run up the rivers and tributaries like the veins in a leaf. The barren spaces between these branches are filled with proliferating plant life. The oceans seem to be teeming with life, and then the first bug-like creatures start to crawl out on land. They spread all over, rapidly changing into a variety of insects and strange lobster-like creatures. Fern-like plants appear. Vast varieties of life appear and then disappear. Elaborate life experiments succeed one another with awesome complexity.
Then suddenly I am in a steaming swamp-like environment that looked familiar. With awe and amazement, I realize that I am watching the age of the dinosaur, and it slowly dawns on me that I am witness to the history of life evolving on the planet Earth! With a speed that defies accurate recall, life forms change again and again, spreading and multiplying in a dizzying array of shapes and colors. Humanoid creatures appear and soon after are hunting, then farming and building. Civilizations bloom, spread, and subside, like bubbles on a fermenting pond. Ages of war and conquest express the speed of civilization and technology. I witness slaughter and mayhem, torture and mutilation, rape and castration. Man’s inhumanity to man is illustrated in myriad forms. I am there, “in” it, feeling it as both the doer and the done to. For what seems an interminably long time, civilizations rise and fall in inter-folding waves of creation, and brilliant innovations in arts and sciences, only to fall in smoking ruins followed by ages of darkness.
Then, points of light appear in the dark, interconnecting again in new waves of discovery and renaissance. Undulating waves of humanity are crashing and washing over the planet in a succession of expansion and contraction. As I live through this flux and change, there arises in me an awareness of the noble and brave potential of humanity and its duty as the intelligent species to protect the forests and life forms and water of the planet. I experience a feeling of the sacred unity with all life. I see the whole planet’s surface as one organism, inhabited by one spirit, growing its forests to protect its surface and provide even moisture and temperature for all its creatures. I see one species, humanity, as the natural intelligent guardian of all life. I realize that it is humanity’s intelligence that must understand, preserve, and care for the earth’s surface—and life that is its nutrient substrate, its womb, and its mother. I feel how all life was precious, interconnecting, and supportive of all other life. I dedicate my spirit not to destroy any part of this puzzle of divine mystery that is the milk of creation. Throughout, there is this balance, and an acknowledgment of the intertwining of opposites, the negative and positive, the base and noble. This feeling flows through me as a dual aspect of one energy - total, deep... sweeping me away on this immense journey of life’s history. It was like falling in love, so entrancing was this vision.
Hours had elapsed. The fire was long gone, yet this movie continued with fantastic detail, one pageant coming on the heels of another. An example of the incredible detail that ibogaine shows: through my constantly available “zoom lens,” I am observing a French king and his retinue during a formal promenade in the gardens of Versailles. Of this large group of people in courtly splendor, one woman’s dress catches my eye. I can see from a great distance the hem of her dress, an intricate and tiny embroidery of inter-linked fleur-de-lis. Simultaneously, I see both immense and complicated scenes and vistas as well as small details with great precision. On and on it goes, and I never move. This peak experience goes on for at least 14 hours. I am watching scenes from the industrial revolution when the sun shows through the window. The movie continues in stronger and weaker waves, dimming in the light and finally fading out, although I know it is still going on at some internal level. Although I can move around now, I am still high, and it is still going on 24 hours later. This is a long trip!
By afternoon, we are all getting pretty hungry. I decide to brave the world and pick up some food at the corner store. I exit the house, which was located on the black side of the street, and head for a Puerto Rican store on the opposite corner. This is New York, a place where people don’t usually greet strangers on the street. I walk past this old man who glances up and says, “Hello.” Down at the corner I meet a black woman; we also greet each other and smile. I cross the street and enter the store. Pretty soon I am chatting and joking with the owners, and they are putting extra fruit in my bag as gifts. As I exit the store and cross the street, on my return I have to pass through a group of young black gang members who had just arrived. To my surprise they let me pass with no incident. What was going on? As I walk back it hits me. I know where we all came from. We all came from the same source—the same mother. There is no difference between us. I see it, I feel it... I “am” it, and that is recognizable instantly by others. I am transformed into a being at one with all other life. Racism and prejudice are incomprehensible to me. I know where we all come from, from the same universe: we are all one.
What I learned from this trip is that there is a new paradigm arising for humankind. Transcending mind, one finds the spirit or soul. Rejecting the bias of politics and the destructiveness of fear, one finds that life and unity and harmony are served by love. Humanity’s role as guardian of the planet becomes all too urgent as we go beyond the carrying capacity of the planet’s surface. This is the dream we must realize: to bring back the health of life and nature on this planet. Protect the womb that has borne us and still serves us. Bring back the forests, let the waters run clean, and live in love and harmony with each other. It is time to understand the roots of fear and deal with them. Let us join in a dance to celebrate life and love and rediscover the beauty of inner sacredness.
What is this stuff called ibogaine that tastes like earth and lets you see your ancestors? Is it a DNA-designed communication link to our origins? How far back are these origins? Are we visitors from space, planted here on the wings of the God-DNA? Is this cosmic panorama it reveals created to give humanity a real look at our history to understand who we are and how we are connected to the universe? One thing is certain: ibogaine is one of the true, deep psychedelics. It is flesh of the Gods. Use it with preparation, respect, and care, and you may grant yourself a taste of truth, a vision into the nature of reality and an inspiration to enter into the path of unity and knowing.
One of richest uses of psychedelics is giving them enough time and attention to allow the sacred messages to filter through and become meaningful. A day before for preparation and one afterwards for contemplation is ideal. The peyote people would spend the morning after, for a traditional breakfast and sharing the visions they had had and finding meanings in these messages from beyond. In like manner, we can also find new meanings for these visions as the years deepen our perspectives.
So as time passed, I wondered who it could have been that was seeing the evolution of life on our planet. Was this some mystery that would just have to be accepted as is? Many years later I came across two ideas that gave new meaning and depth to these ibogaine visions. The first idea came when I read about an explorer in the Amazon questioning the chief of the Mayoruna about the purpose of all the intense psychedelic journeys that the entire tribe participated in. He said that the purpose was to go back to the beginning. The second idea came after reading Jeremy Narby’s book The Cosmic Serpent. I realized that it was quite possible that the DNA molecule has an extraterrestrial origin. In fact, due to the complexity of this life-evolving molecule and the relatively short window it has had to evolve on this earth, DNA’s evolution here on planet earth may just be another geocentric earthling myth.
Putting these two ideas together started a process that gave a whole new meaning to my ibogaine vision. I was going back to the beginning. Going back to the beginning of life on this planet. Certainly, it was not my persona that was going back. Then what or who was going back? What was the common denominator of all living things? Who was the “I” that was observing and so intensely participating in all these lives and journeys? Suddenly I realized that the common denominator and the origin of life was the DNA that we all carry, whether it be the simplest bacteria or modern man. Now my vision took on a whole new meaning. Our consciousness predates this solar system. I'd gone back to the beginning, when I (and all of us) were space-borne DNA looking for a new home to create life. I'd been seeking through one solar system after another, until I came to the nascent solar system we call our home. Now I rush down to the surface after waiting eons for conditions to be right for the formation of life. Then down I go, creating new life, evolving from the beginning... into the vast mystery.
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You are the "I" that Nick is referring to. There is nothing to worry about, you'll be ok. The planet will renew itself. Visualize and hold in your heart the greater purpose of creation.
pb
the world is being rinsed in a scientific baptism, and to some degree, a philosophical one. I'm optimistic.
